Summer in Shadows
by Cynnish
Summary: The summer after GoF, Ron visits Hermione's house.


Summer in Shadows  
[10/4/3]  
-----  
  
It starts with a letter, just a note to invite his family to lunch and maybe he can stay a few days if he wants before she goes to Bulgaria for the last few weeks of summer. He keeps it secret in his pocket because he wants to rip it up and pretend he never got it but then she's written to Ginny too, and he has to show it to them and they have to ooh and aah over the idea of dinner in a Muggle house. It begins with excitement and fluster and for once they get there early so his mother can watch how hers cooks and his sister can admire the tee vee and his brothers can play Muggle chess.  
  
She looks at him with big brown eyes and he is angry with her.  
  
They eat and laugh and joke and Ginny is fascinated with Muggle music and Mrs Granger is giving her an old music-player to take home and Arthur's already on about the batteries and even though it's their home ground he's almost too much for her parents, and they subside into nods and smiles and furtive glances pass between them.   
  
Sometimes his father's beyond a joke and when she looks at him again his face grows hot.  
  
And then they've gone and it's just him and her and her parents and they're suddenly awkward again in the big empty quiet of such a tiny group of people. She shows him round and her house is so square and organised and their carpets so clean and pale and smooth he's scared to tread too hard in case he dents them. She shows him the garden and the setting sun catches in the frizz of her hair until it glitters orange and pink every time she moves her head. He stares at it open-mouthed until she looks at him with a look like disappointment which says, _Why aren't you talking to me?_ and _What have I done?_  
  
But she hasn't done anything, and he can't explain what she's going to do, that he feels it in his bones; that when she goes to Bulgaria she'll be gone and he'll have lost her.   
  
They sit together at her desk with their knees almost touching while she tells him what she's read for next term already and worries about the OWLs and the dead feeling in his stomach almost overpowers him and he snaps at her because she's got nothing to worry about and he has, because Fred and George fucked up and he's nowhere near as clever as they are. Because they study as often as she does, really, but they use it all on sweets and gags and she just writes essays and copies her notes out in different colours and reads for _fun_, but not about Quidditch, which is the only thing he knows.  
  
He sleeps in the guest room with flowery sheets and pink walls and a mirror which doesn't talk back when he swears at it.   
  
Then the sun shines and her parents have gone to work and she toasts toast and the jam comes out of jars instead of wands and they almost eat in silence except for the wireless which plays music he's never heard and she taps her foot and hums along. She shows him how Muggles wash up and how Muggles write letters with quills made of plastic or clicky-clacky machines on parchment white as snow and how Muggles ride bicycles as juddery as Shooting Stars only they don't play games on them, but he keeps falling off and swears at her when he grazes his knee.   
  
She looks at him and her eyes are like his conscience.  
  
A bell rings and she rushes inside and he follows and she's talking on the tefalone with giggles and pink cheeks and eyes all big and glowing. But she looks at him and her smile falters and she says she can't possibly, she's got a guest from school and no, it's a he, and she hides her face behind her hair and says all right then, and goodbye. And she looks at him grimly and tells him that her Muggle friends are coming and he looks away from her with shaking hands because he's too annoyed to speak.  
  
They come and they're three girls as pretty as she is, showing tanned shoulders and long bare legs, and they giggle and pore over magazines with dead, still, pictures like the one by Dean's bed that makes him queasy to look at, because those people standing there look to him like the rows and rows of statues of the dead in those cold, clammy, Egyptian tombs. And sometimes they look at him through their long, glossy hair and giggle even more and she's giggling too and he's never seen her like this, all talk of tee vee and music and she even tells them about _him_, although she edits it so that he's a star of some Muggle sport, and it's only when they ask for a picture that she falters. And she looks at him and they all look at him and then her and he doesn't smile.  
  
When they've gone she doesn't look at him any more and her body shakes with tension and he thinks she's going to cry, so he touches her shoulder and she almost collapses into him and she _is_ crying, because he can feel her tears against his skin through his cotton shirt although she barely makes a sound. She doesn't look at him but she's so close this time that her voice is dull and flat and reverberates inside his ribs when she asks why he's come if he's not interested in the Muggle stuff and he wants to say he's there because of her, but he can't because of _him_ and not just _him_, but Harry too, and Ginny and Neville, because she's just not his to say it to, because he's never had anything that was just his, and she isn't either.  
  
He says that, but not in so many words; he says he's as interested in Muggles as she's interested in Eastern Europe and it takes a moment before she gets it and then her eyes flicker and he sees pity and surprise, but she isn't crying and she doesn't cry.  
  
But she looks at him and he looks at her and in the silence his heart breaks.  
  
----- 


End file.
